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Desperately seeking Mamta Kulkarni

For over 10 years now, a dedicated band of journalists was on the lookout for this elusive actress but somehow, no one had any idea about her whereabouts. She has been dodging the media for over a decade and though we all knew that she existed somewhere on this planet but there were no concrete leads on how to find her.

The last bit of information that we managed to extract was that she got married to yesteryear drug-lord, Vicky Goswami, who is now settled in Nairobi. There were conflicting reports that Mamta Kulkarni is in the US, while others claimed she stayed at Jumeirah in Dubai. In May this year, we managed to locate her in Dubai through an event organiser.

Those who were associated with her during her last phase in Bollywood said that she was turning spiritual and increasingly cynical about the world around her. In 1999, when she was on her way out as an actress, she was described by some of her colleagues as ‘mad and neurotic’. Mamta suitably responded to those ‘allegations’ in her own candid and outspoken way, claiming that she is ‘absolutely normal’. She also admitted that she knew Vicky Goswami but she was just a friend to him and not married to him.

The last big controversy about Mamta involved filmmaker Raj Kumar Santoshi getting a call from the underworld because he dropped her from his film, China Gate after a spat. Mamta claimed that Santoshi misbehaved with her.

It was alleged that Vicky Goswami, on learning about the incident, requested his business associate, underworld don Chhota Rajan to make a call to Santoshi. The call was made and soon she was back in the film.

Though Santoshi took her back in China Gate, she alleged later that her scenes were brutally chopped off on the editing table and the glitzy item song (Chamma Chamma) was handed over to Urmila Matondkar. After that controversy, she steadily started losing films as China Gate flopped miserably. Most other filmmakers were too scared to work with her because of her underworld connections.

The Indian media has been dogged in its quest for the actress’ whereabouts. Investigations by different reporters revealed that her passport number is F 661**** and that she was issued a multiple-entry US visa on 14/11/2010. The visa is valid till 2020.

We also came to know that the name on her passport is Mamta Mukund Kulkarni and her permanent address is in Andheri West (where she owns three apartments).

Her former Bollywood friends revealed that she was living in Dubai for the longest time since her departure from Mumbai. They also said that since her husband Vicky Goswami was incarcerated in a Dubai jail, she was taking care of his properties there.

Vicky (now 52 years old) was released from the Dubai prison on November 15, 2012, 16 years after he was sentenced to life imprisonment for smuggling 843kg of Methaqualone (Mandrax) and establishing two drug factories in Dubai. The court pardoned him on grounds that he was a reformed criminal and a deeply religious man. It was reported that Vicky married Mamta while in jail. Sources said that Vicky shifted to Kenya soon after his release and Mamta followed him. The same sources maintained that she hasn’t changed her nationality or her name.

Finally, a good lead…

One day I got a call from an old industry friend who claimed that she has been able to locate a lady called Mamta Mukund at an ashram in north India, who looks strikingly similar to Mamta Kulkarni. To my surprise, I was told that she has become deeply spiritual. I was sent a mobile grab of her meditating at the ashram but the picture was so grainy that it didn’t convince me. I fell off my chair when she told me that she has written a book on her guru.

Now, anybody who knew Mamta closely knew the fact that she was not proficient in English. Hence, it seemed improbable that she would write a book. Here is a video of an early interview of Mamta Kulkarni where she struggled to speak in English.

I sent this interview link to my source and commented that there is no way that she could write a book in English because she struggled with the language. Still we kept searching for the book in bookstores and soon realised that it was a wild goose chase. None of the book stores — online or offline — seemed to have it. It seemed that such a book didn’t exist.

We were on the verge of giving up.

But then we stumbled on a link to a .pdf file to a book written by somebody called Mamta Mukund Kulkarni. When we downloaded the file and opened it, the biggest surprise of my life was waiting for me.

The book was written exactly a Mamta Kulkarni will write a book — grammatically incorrect but straight from the heart. The best part of the ‘book’ was that it had a bunch of her latest pictures. One look at pictures and my friends were convinced that this is the same woman I was so desperately looking for.

Here is a slide-show of a few pictures that she had uploaded on April 26.

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Since the book mentioned a few links to her social networking sites, it was easy to traverse through the maze of fake profiles to find her. I also checked the location through her IP address that she had used to upload the pictures. The location showed up as Nairobi, Kenya. She is following two people from her twitter handle and both of them are residents of Nairobi.

My two friends — who had been helping me to seek the actor out — are convinced that we have finally found our Mamta Kulkarni! However, I am yet to speak to her.

We will let this sink in first and in the next blog post, we will tell you what Mamta Kulkarni was doing in the last 10 years, away from everybody’s prying eyes.

Soumya…had met mamta a few times in her heyday…she seemed to know what she wanted and how to get it…she had even offered to organise a photo session with her and michael jackson and her for the filmfare cover…saying she bharatbhai shah would do it for her…it didn’t happen…do find her career…short lived as it was and her disappearance a super bollywood story…thanks for the good
post…and keep at it…thanks! Also liked your post on kamal sadanah’s video film…u should be in a mainstream paper or magazine!! Way to go!

Poor Mamta. She and I got aling famously well. As a journalist I loved her for her bold quotes that she gave. Her best interviews has been with me. She was often misunderstood because she didn’t accept bollywood”s hypocritical ways. Very frank and honest, she didn’t have anyone guiding her well. so sad. I hope she is happy wherever she is.

Soumyadipta is very funny you show an interview asked in hindi language and answered in hindi language and her command over English is judged now tell me who is really half cooked in British language and who thinks to be over-cooked shame on you the interview you got from her was not written by some secretary but herself .
okay you or your so called associates make them to write an book in half of what Mamta Kulkarni has written which she has dished out without any editor or some co-worker or an editor and lets see the fun .
this lady is convent educated not like your so called actual vernacular associates as they what you are you assess other a blind man always sees the entire world blind and so are you soumya
And your so called call her book as grammatically wrong as this book has nothing to do with getting some grammatically genius award its about getting truth about the highest knowledge in simpler away as it is understood by common man than those so called aesthetically genius books which manage a place in the shelf of an library but hardly understood and practised by common people or so called grammatically genius indivisuals